104 
Northern Trails. Book I 
the world was but a chaos of mad rolling snow clouds; 
and behind them — Their stout little hearts trembled as 
they saw not a vestige of the trail they had just made. 
With the great world itself, their own little tracks, as 
fast as they made them, were swept and blotted out of 
existence. Like two sparrows that had dropped blinded 
and bewildered on the vast plain out of the snow cloud, 
they huddled together without one friendly sign to tell 
them whence they had come or whither they were 
going. Worst of all, the instinct of direction, which 
often guides an Indian through the still fog or the 
darkest night, seemed benumbed by the cold and the 
tumult; and not even Old Tomah himself could have 
told north or south in the blinding storm. 
Still they ran on bravely, bending to the fierce blasts, 
heading the wind as best they could, till Mooka, trip¬ 
ping a second time in a little hollow where a brook ran 
deep under the snow, and knowing now that they were 
but wandering in an endless circle, seized Noel’s arm 
and repeated her question: 
“ Are we lost, little brother? ” 
And Noel, lost and bewildered, but gripping his bow 
in his fur mitten and peering here and there, like an old 
hunter, through the whirling flakes and rolling gusts to 
catch some landmark, some lofty crag or low tree-line 
that held steady in the mad dance of the world, still 
made confident Indian answer: 
